Part 8

Yes, it was the treasure at last, and no one, no soul alive, except herself, must know of it. She looked round hastily into the darkness and silence. There was no fear of interruption now; there might be afterwards. Her best plan was to finish the grave, so as to obliterate all trace of the spot whence she had taken that heavy brass pot, and then, but not till then, to go home quietly. The next instant the thud of the mattock began again. A lucky decision; for the Kâzi's son, surprised at finding Suttu absent, was beginning to suspect treachery from the silence, when the digging recommenced. Shâhbâsh, then, meant to keep faith, and not seek safety in flight. But Suttu? As the spoiler sat beside the friendly watchman he asked himself if the lies he himself had circulated so diligently about the religious were true, and she had an assignation elsewhere. He gnashed his teeth over the thought and his own rejection.

"A step, my lord! it was a step!" whispered one of the guardians, and the Kâzi's son crept towards the hut. He had not entered it before, being assured it was empty; but now, thinking Suttu might have seen him and slipped into the darkness for safety, he felt his way through the door and so on by the wall.

Then a yell burst from him--a cry once heard never to be forgotten:

"Snake! snake!"

The watchmen heard it and came slowly, feeling their dark way with sticks, lest where one snake was there might be two. Suttu heard it also, and, lamp in hand, ran back to the hut, knowing that friend or foe was in deadly peril.

Something huddled up, writhing, moaning, clasping one hand with the other, shapeless, convulsed by fear, lay upon the ground--something that flung itself before her and yelled for a charm--the saint's charm--for mercy--for help--for anything.

"Thou!" she cried, "thou! What dost here?"

She knew well enough, and she thrust him back savagely.

"Never mind that now, mother," whimpered one of the men. "Give him the charm. Sure God gave such to the saints for all men, and all men are sinners."

"For men--not for dogs! Go, hound--go and die! I have no charm for thee."

The wretched creature, struggling from the hands of the watchmen, who strove to set him on his feet, caught her by the ankle. "Save me! save me, to be thy friend! I know--I can save--I--"

He sank down helpless, foaming at the mouth from abject fear.

Suttu paused. There was something in that view of the case. If anything could be done, if by chance-- By the light of the lamp she examined the bitten finger closely, and an odd look came to her face.

"It was near the door, breast-high by the sticks of the thatch thou wast bitten," she said, as she hastily concealed the wound under a bandage.

"Yea, yea, thou knowest! The charm, mother Suttu, the charm! I swear to be thy friend!"

The _fakeerni_ looked contemptuously at her writhing lover. "Swear by thy son's head, fool! naught else will satisfy me!"

When the only oath a native will not break had been pronounced, Suttu stood up with a laugh.

"The charm is worked, Mir Sahib. Thou wilt not die of that bite." Then she checked herself, and with the same odd look on her face assumed a graver tone. "Lo, I will work the charm. As for thee--go home, swift as thou canst. Call the barber, let him bleed thee to faintness. Take _kâla dâna_[11] and sulphur to the full. Eat naught for two days, live righteous, and look not on the bite for a month. Then give a hundred rupees to the saint's shrine."

[Footnote 11: Ipomea seeds.]

"'Tis all right, master," whispered one of the men. "There is no fear of the bargain when payment follows cure. Lo, thou art better already, and by this thou shouldst have been worse, had not the charm worked. Hurry, hurry, lest harm come from disobedience!"

When they were quite out of sight and hearing, Suttu took the lamp, went to the door of the hut and chirruped. From a hole in the wall a pair of bright eyes looked out.

"The Brahmans say true," she chuckled, "and Ram befriends those who befriend his favourite. Shâhbâsh would have had me tear the squirrel's nest down, but I love the chattering things."

She had little time, however, to spare for amusement at her own trick. The grave had to be completed, the treasure brought home by dawn. Her arms ached worse than ever from their short rest, and there was a grey glimmer in the east, before she judged that her work would pass muster. Then she removed all Shâhbâsh's belongings to the side of the grave, leaving him still in a drunken sleep upon the bare ground.

Finally, lifting the brass pot, which was carefully luted over with hard clay, she carried it to the hut, shut the door, and by the growing light through the chinks began to open up her treasure.

The pot was full of farthings--nothing but farthings. She sat and looked at them hopelessly. What did it mean? Why should any one take the trouble to bury farthings? The puzzle was beyond her, and when a gleam of real sun warned her that time was passing, she hid the pot under a pile of brushwood, and stepped out with a feeling of relief into the open air. The world was ablaze with the clear, uncompromising light of an Indian morning. The parrots were wheeling round the blue dome, and a squirrel sat on the top of the thatch chirping over a date stolen from the disputed crop.

Suttu thought of the Kâzi's son physicked, bled, and hungry. Her laugh echoed out among the palms, and she felt more comforted than when, the night before, she had sought solace in chanting.

IV.

Shâhbâsh sat up and opened his mouth with a tremendous yawn. Then he opened his eyes, and at the same moment reached around for the black bottle. Its absence woke him thoroughly, and the further discovery that he was on the bare ground made him instinctively cry "Thieves!" before he was alert enough to notice the sight of his belongings on the ground some little way off. Rising slowly, for he was stiff in his limbs, he stumbled towards them, conscious only of a racking headache. Memory of his own treachery had not yet returned, and when he all but fell into a new-made grave on his way to the black bottle, his mind seemed to him a perfect blank, and he stood transfigured before this evidence of an industry which he could not remember. He sat down helplessly on its edge, dangling his legs over the side, and peered into it critically. Without doubt, if that was his handiwork, he must have been very drunk indeed. The mere force of habit made him slip into it, and, seizing the mattock, begin to trim the shape. Suddenly he gave a yell, and the next moment was up on solid earth again, clutching at something which had rolled out of the last spadeful of earth--something which had clinked and glittered.

Undoubtedly; for all that, it was only a farthing. His face fell. Still, a farthing was money, and pointed to money. Ah, how pleased little mother Suttu would be!

The thought transfixed him again; this time by excess of memory. What had happened to her? What had he done? What cursed fate was this, that he should find money on the very day when he had given up hope and faith? His trembling legs would scarcely support him, as, driven by the necessity of knowing the worst, he stumbled towards the hut, wondering how he should ever face the saint's roly-poly, or how he would endure life without Suttu's laugh to lighten his labours.

What was that echoing among the palms? Surely, surely, it was her laugh. Were the fiends playing tricks with him, or-- Hope literally gave him wings, for, as he galloped forward, the sheet he had thrown round his shoulders spread out on either side, and his matted hair, still bound with chaplets, blew round his head like an aureole. Suttu, standing on the steps, laughed louder at the ridiculous figure gambolling towards her, uttering little cries of joy.

If he had looked like a whipped hound a minute before, he was like a cur restored to favour now, in his delight quite forgetting the necessity for caution, till Suttu sternly asked him to explain. Then, inspired by elation, he lied magnificently. Was there no just cause for joy when he had found the treasure?

"The treasure! Thou hast found it?" cried the _fakeerni_, paling before the fear lest she had overlooked the real prize. "Where--what treasure?"

"The saint's treasure--lakhs on lakhs! Listen, O incredulous! O suspicious! and eat shame. Last night, urged by the virulence of thine enemies, I vowed a mighty vow for the accomplishment of thy desires, caring naught for my own ruin. I spread a cloth for my fairy, setting it well with flowers, and dancing to please her. But when she came, allured by my graces, I spurned her. Yea, I trampled her under foot. I took my heart and hers out of our bodies and ate them before her face. 'Show me the treasures,' I cried; 'rescue my little mother Suttu from the necessity of marrying a one-eyed, pock-marked man, or I set no more cloths for thee!' Lo, thou shouldst have seen her clinging to me like a weanling child; but I would none of her! Then she grew wroth, saying she would ne'er return; but I answered, 'Who cares?' Think, _mai_ Suttu--I, Shâhbâsh, said that to my fairy for thy sake, and thou hast suspicions. Nay, smite me, but I said more. I said--what did I not say?--till--till she smote me on the forehead, so--and I died. Yea, I died as much as a man may and yet live. So--so--she dug a grave for me--for she would not the jackals had my beauty. Yea, a grave! See you, it was not much of a grave--a poor grave, such as a woman's hand could make. Lo, my heart aches for the blisters there must be--"

"Go on, liar," said Suttu, calmly, "and let the blisters be. They will heal without thy lip-salve."

"May I eat dirt if it be not true! Then, towards morning, being chastened by blisters, her heart melted: so she buried the treasure instead of me. That is how it came about."

Suttu could not resist a smile.

"But the treasure, fool--the treasure?"

Shâhbâsh, dancing round her, flourished a coin, which she snatched from him hastily.

"Lo!" she cried, in tones of disappointment, "'tis only a farthing."

"Only a farthing!" echoed Shâhbâsh, ironically. "Hark to the incredulous. Aye, but it means gold close at hand. Dost not know that wise men put pennies when they take pounds, so that the _jinn_ who guards the treasure may find the tale true when he counts the coins?"

Suttu's hand went up swiftly to her forehead; she gave a little cry.

"Dost mean they put farthings in place of gold?"

"Aye! Sure, a coin is a coin to the _jinn_, and when the last gold bit is gone he sits guarding a pot of farthings till judgment. Ho, ho!--ha, ha!"

His mirth left Suttu smileless.

"A pot--of--farthings," she muttered slowly. Then a light broke in on her, and she threw up her hands, exclaiming: "Gone! Aye, he said it was gone, and we thought he meant--gone! Yea, it is clear! Gone, gone, gone!"

"What is clear? What hath gone?" asked Shâhbâsh, curiously. The need for caution came home to her.

"'Tis clear thou art a fool," she said, "and my trust in thee is gone. Why cannot folk leave me alone?" she continued, querulously. "I only ask peace and quiet."

And then, to the dwarf's horror and amazement, she suddenly began to cry--_mai_ Suttu crying like any other woman!

"'Tis but the _pilu_-berries," he whimpered. "Did I not tell thee they were watery diet, apt to turn acid and destroy the courage? But there shall be no more wild meats for thee, _mai_ Suttu. The treasure is found."

It was, indeed. All that day the _fakeerni_ sat wondering what she had better do; but, if she was quick to carry out a suggestion, she had no head for the weaving of plots and plans. The pot of farthings represented a few rupees, but not enough to purchase witnesses and conduct a case in court. The Kâzi's son would at least not give evidence against her, but even the break-down of this particular claim would benefit her little. She must have something to live upon; and, what is more, nothing but the hope of discovering treasure would keep Shâhbâsh faithful to his salt, or induce the accountant to come to terms.

Towards evening she strolled over to watch the dwarf, who had been digging the grave deeper and deeper, longer and longer.

"Art going to bury a saint, O Shâhbâsh?" she asked, with a broad smile.

From the trench behind the growing mountain of soil came grunts and groans. Then a verse of the Koran, mingled with something suspiciously like curses.

She sat down on the pile and looked over the level stretch dotted by mud hillocks, with here and there a masonry tomb. On one of these a squirrel sat perched, hard at work on a peach-stone which some wayfarer on the adjoining path had flung aside.

Suttu's keen delight in open-air sights and sounds kept her watching the dainty little creature as it shifted the prize this way and that in its deft fingers so as to bring its teeth to bear on the hard shell. It worked as hard as Shâhbâsh, she thought, with another of her broad smiles, and deserved the sweet kernel. No, another squirrel had caught wind of the affair and came pirating along with tail full set. Lo, 'twas a play to watch! Up and down, round and round. The peach-stone dropped here, snatched up there, now in this one's possession, now in that, until finally the new-comer sat in the place of the old, gnawing at the hard shell, and twisting it about with deft fingers.

Suttu, with her chin on her hands, watched the second as she had the first.

And, after all, there was no kernel in the peach-stone, nothing but a shrivelled skin which had once----!

Suttu stood up, clapping her hands.

"_Shâhbâsh! Shâhbâsh!_" she cried.

The dwarf stuck his head out of the grave.

"Well, _mai_ Suttu, what is it now?"

She turned with a flaunt of her petticoat, a flinging out of her round arms.

"'Twas the other 'Shâhbâsh' I meant, but 'tis all one. Leave digging, and go and call Hussan, the father-in-law. I have made up my mind."

* * * * *

It was ten years after these events that the English boy, who had stayed proceedings in the date-picking, returned to the district as deputy commissioner. Gratitude, she averred, was her first reason for appearing in my garden with a cunningly plaited basket of Deen Ali's fruit. Afterwards a mutual fancy between her and my young barbarians led to confidences when she came over with all sorts of odd toys made out of palm-leaves and supplies of young squirrels for the children. She was still undoubtedly handsome, and the indisputable possessor of the tomb and the date-trees. The graveyard with its rights of alms and treasure had passed into the hands of the village accountant, in consideration of a monthly pension of ten rupees.

It was in answer to a query why she kept so many tame squirrels that this tale was told.

"And you had no difficulty in persuading your father-in-law?"

"None, _Huzoor!_ God gave the bait, the fool swallowed it. The farthing Shâhbâsh found bought him, greed and all. It was better than fighting when the Kâzi would not swear to the marriage, and our names were birth-names. He signed the stamp paper gladly; and the perquisites have gone up again, so he hath lost nothing."

"Shâhbâsh?"

A big, broad smile came to her face.

"He digs, and his stomach is always full. What more can he want? The squirrels are quite happy over the peach-stones while they are gnawing. Shâhbâsh and the father-in-law think the kernel is inside, that is all. I know it is not. So we are both content."

When I left the district on promotion, Suttu came out as I rode past the blue-tiled tomb on my way to the river, with a great sheaf of lotus-blossoms in her arms. A tame squirrel, reared from the perennial nest in the thatch, peered from the folds in her veil, with furtive, bright eyes. The parrots circled, screaming round the ripening dates, and but a minute before my horse had shied from a _karait_, curving back to the prickly covert. The well known setting seemed a part of that familiar figure.

"May the Lord have the _Huzoor_ in his keeping ever!" she said, decorously, as became a _fakeerni_. But her smile seemed to dim the sunlight, as with a gesture full of grace she flung the lotus-blossoms in my path.

That was my last sight of Suttu.

AT A GIRLS' SCHOOL.

I.

It was a large, square block of a building, which had once been somebody's palace. Not very old. That could be recognized by the odd, reminiscent air of a Genoese palazzo which clung to it, proclaiming the influence of some Italian adventurer in the Mogul times. In those days, doubtless, its blank arcaded walls had risen from a terraced orange-garden; but now the surrounding slums of a big, native city ended abruptly, at varying distance, in an irregular brick-strewn space, where buffaloes were tethered to eat street sweepings, and their refuse in its turn was set out to dry in fuel cakes--that being the last resort of matter in India, where poverty and greed fight for the uttermost farthing of utility. Besides the buffaloes and the refuse-heaps, the space in its longest angle showed the inevitable weaver's warp twined in and out of tiger-grass stalks stuck slantwise in the dust--inevitable, because it is never absent from an open space in a native city. Sometimes solitary, like a huge worm impaled and left to dry; more often tended by two chattering Fates, one on each side, whose tongues gabble an accompaniment to the whirring bobbins tied to long sticks which dance a ladies' chain through the grass-stalks, as the bearers walk swiftly up and down the long length of growing warp--up and down, with an outward swirl of a full petticoat and a veil bulging backward, as the free brown arms twist and twine. A common sight, a picturesque one withal, seeing that it shows a good figure at its best. Sometimes beyond these two Fates you may see Clotho spinning her lacquered wheel, but not often. As a rule she hides in narrow alleys, where, set well over the central gutter on a stool, she can discuss past, present, and future with half a dozen neighbours at a time.

For the rest, the building was distinctly imposing. Like a palazzo, it was tunnelled by one single high archway, leading into a central court-yard, decorously circled by orange-trees in tubs. Above these, again, was a further likeness in the three tiers of graceful arcades surrounding a square of deep ultramarine sky. There, however, the resemblance ended. A Genoese palace is sacred to silence and shadow; this was set apart to sunshine and sound, excepting on a gala day, when the philanthropic great ones came down to distribute prizes. Then it burst forth into carpets, awnings, curtains, and even the _Alif-Bey--wallahs_ (alphabet-class) in the first story bit their tongues to keep them still. That was the noisiest story. All day long the inmates chanted letters in high childish voices, while the monitors stood over them like the parent bird, ready to drop a fresh titbit of knowledge into the clamorous mouths.

Up-stairs, in the primary department, the babel had lost its first barbarous simplicity; the makers of it did not always understand what they themselves were saying, and the uncertainty of all things had damped their infant light-heartedness. Higher again, in the third story, quite an academic silence prevailed among the girls working away at Euclid, algebra, and all the 'ologies, and they had learned an automatic thrust forward of the arm towards the teacher worthy of a British board school. This never failed to please exotic philanthropy. The connection may not have been quite clear, but this particular branch of knowledge was invariably looked upon as a sign that education was really at last beginning to leaven the mass of deplorable female ignorance in India.

Perhaps it was. Certainly this school, with its court-yard devoted to the _dhoolies_ in which the pupils were carried to and from their lessons, and its three stories of different standards, formed a perfect ladder of learning; the lowermost rung being the listless, lazy group of bearers lounging in the gateway with the female chaperons until four o'clock chimed from a hundred gongs in the city. Then they earned a monthly pay from the Government by carrying the climbers of the ladder back to their homes in decent seclusion--playing, as it were, the part of Prince Hassan's carpet in transporting them into another hemisphere--nay, more, another world. At any rate, from algebra and the exact sciences to a cell of four walls, and, if Fate were kind, a few square yards of flat roof open to the sky. Something of a mental somersault; therefore it was perhaps as well in one point of view, if not in another, that many of the claimants to genteel seclusion who were comfortably carried by a paternal Government to their own doors, could, on arrival, set aside the convenient pretence and go about to see their friends with the more simple and less costly protection of a veil.

"_Ari_, sister!" said a young, dissipated-looking lounger in the gate; "there is that baby awake again. Go, Chundoo, and call Fâtma."

The woman addressed--a big, brazen lump--went yawning and stretching to stand on the bottom step of the arched stairway. Then she called into the clamour above:

"Fâtma! Fâtma! The baby is awake."

Her hard tones echoed up the arcades, but the sing-song went on without a break. After a while, however, a pattering step came down the stairs, bringing into view a child of about ten, with a sharp, old face. Her blue trousers were rent at the knees, her skinny hands inconceivably smeared with ink--there was more ink than hand--and the coarse cotton cloth she wore as a veil was frayed, worn, and dirty. Beneath it, the odd little galloon of plaited hair on her forehead showed sun-bleached and rumpled, despite its tightness. A competent observer could have told at once that she belonged to the Cashmiri quarter, and to either a poverty-stricken or a bereaved house. No mother's fingers had been at that plaited hair for weeks.

"Where is Peru?" she began shrilly, still coming down the stairs. "Gambling and dicing, or snoozing and sleeping. How am I to win scholarships if my days are lost over a baby? _Ai_, sluggard! is that you? Art not ashamed of thyself?"

So, passing through the knot of jeering men into a dark recess in the entry, till her rating ceased over a year-old baby whimpering on the floor on a ragged quilt. "Peace! peace, my son, it is I, Fâtma--yea, it is Fâtma, thy father's sister."

The baby's fat, yellow legs--for it was one of those fair Cashmiri children who look sickly among the brown ones--were astride her curved hip, the whole balance of her thin bare body against its weight, as she paused once more among the men to fling a parting gibe at the sluggard.

"_Ai, teri nâni!_ 'Tis thy baby, I suppose--not mine."

A roar of laughter greeted the words, in which the girl joined, not because she quite understood its cause, but because she was quick enough to see that it was at Peru's expense, not hers. The veil which Nature draws to protect childhood counts for little among the men and women busy in drawing one to conceal their own unnatural vice, but Fâtma's hoary knowledge of evil did not extend to a _double entendre_. She repeated her sally in childish ineptitude, till Peru with a curse bade her begone and take the boy to his mother.

"_Tobah!_ but she hath a tongue," murmured another lounger.

"_Pucki, burri pucki_" (ripe or ready--very ready), assented Chundoo, shaking her head wisely. "'Tis time thou hadst a husband for her, O Peru!"

"Not I. Who is to bake bread and take the child? 'Tis ten rupees a month for the other, remember; and Fâtma--I swear it--is a good sort, for all her tongue."